


Shitty Houses

by hint2bee



Series: All Fall Together [1]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, First Time, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 23:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10978074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hint2bee/pseuds/hint2bee
Summary: Dinesh lives in a shitty white suburban mom style house, and when one of his neighbor's houses catches on fire, it's really a delight to him.Oh, and the one night stand with the not-so-mysterious stranger is a delight as well.





	Shitty Houses

**Author's Note:**

> alright it took forever but here's a pre-canon part of the series! hopefully more to come soon
> 
> also thanks anna (@roadhouseblues on tumblr) for the inspiration even tho i hate u

Dinesh lives in a shitty house.

The thing is, it’s not messy. It’s not dirty, or musty, or anything that any of his other apartments were, it’s a small, well lit space that has a housemaid attached to the rent, so it’s always clean. It’s got this fucking stupid motif of seashells and sea blue walls, he doesn’t fucking know? 

It seems like it’d be perfect for some white suburban housewife, but it’s in the middle of Silicon Valley, a hellhole filled with disgusting coders and programmers who stay up until god-knows-when in the morning doing-god-knows-what, destroying their retinas and developing carpal tunnel syndrome. If you got some thirty-something mom wth two kids, a husband, and a disposable income living in this house, she would just bask in its Martha Stewart-esque glow, while sipping her matcha kale smoothie and reading _Eat Pray Love_ after hot yoga, but Dinesh doesn’t know what matcha is, and he’s never heard of _Eat Pray Love_.

He lives in a really, really shitty house.

He rubs his eyes for what feels like the thousandth time that night, and glances up at the clock that he knows is about 2 hours behind. It reads “1:45 AM”.

“Fuck,” Dinesh whispers, rubbing his eyes again, his contacts going out of focus. Another fucking night wasted on shit code. He leans back slightly, and opens one of his desk drawers. He opens the small wooden box in it, and growls to himself.

He’s out of weed.

He pulls out the other box, this one cardboard, and shakes it to let out his contacts. He’s out of contacts too. Dinesh growls, and throws the box in his hand against the wall.

He throws the wrong box.

The wooden box hits the wall, and the dry wall dents and cracks around where the box hits. Light brown dust falls from the cracks in the soft blue paint, and Dinesh stares at the dent. That’s not gonna be easy to explain to his landlord.

The contacts begin to sting his eyes, and he remembers when his mom would tell him horror stories of contacts and eyes falling out of heads.

So Dinesh begins taking his contacts out and thinks about calling his mother. He thinks about what he would tell her, about… his attempts at coding? The weird job interviews he’s been avoiding thinking about? The strange large red headed man who said something vaguely racist and then immediately offered Dinesh weed? 

He probably should’ve taken him up on his offer.

Dinesh has taken his contacts out and is searching for his glasses while still debating the merits of calling his mother when he hears a boom from across the street, and groans. He should probably check on that. As he leaves his room and walks through the living area that he never uses, he sees a strange light coming through the window. It cannot _possibly_ be light yet.

It’s not the sun, as he soon finds out, but the rather large house across the street has burst into flames, and is slowly being consumed. It’s really a fantastic sight, he can hear sirens from several miles away, and the shouts of his neighbors as they leave their houses in the middle of the night to watch the destruction of the house.

“That sure is something.”

Dinesh turns, and he comes face to face with another man. He’s taller, and pale, with slightly more muscles than Dinesh, and his long, dark hair is tied up behind him. Dinesh feels a pit form in his stomach that he hasn’t felt since middle school, when he realized yes, boys _were_ gross but _also_ attractive, and he realizes this strange fucker is hot.

Dinesh’s mouth dries, and he nods softly, assuming this man is right. What did he say? Dinesh knows he said something. The man’s mouth is moving again, and Dinesh hears words clearly, he just forgets to listen.

“Uh.”

“Dude, I was asking if you live around here,” the man says, and Dinesh immediately nods rapidly.

“Yeah, I live in the duplex over there,” Dinesh says, motioning to the house, and the man makes some noise of neutral acknowledgement.

“Do you think they set it on fire for the insurance money?” the man says, and Dinesh is taken slightly aback.

“That’s quite an accusation to make, did you know them?” Dinesh asks, confused.

“Making small talk, man,” the man says, and Dinesh thinks about what to say next. He vaguely wants to go home with this strange tall man.

“I mean, it all depends. If they were straight, then yes,” Dinesh says, and immediately his face heats up. Why why why he should _not_ be making jokes about sexuality to a complete _stranger_.

The man laughs.

“That’s good, fuck me,” he says, a smile breaking across his face (for the first time, Dinesh notices). The firetrucks have arrived at this point, and the firemen leap to their duties while Dinesh and the man stand idly by, watching the action unfold.

“So what do you think they did?” Dinesh asks.

“I think the husband did something in sales. The wife stayed home all day and drank kale smoothies after spin class and watched reality shows. The kids are both future professional stuck ups,” the man says, only to be subjected to a judging stare from Dinesh. 

“I only know this because I returned their dog a couple times,” he says, and Dinesh laughs.

“That’s too good,” Dinesh says, and the man smiles a little, before glaring back at the house.

“Before you ask, they were out of town,” the man says, and Dinesh realizes he hadn’t even thought about the people who actually owned the house.

“Sucks to be them,” Dinesh says, huffing a little.

“Truly,” the man responds, and the two sit in silence for a beat. The firetrucks pull up to the house, and the two men have to step back to the curb in front of Dinesh’s house.

“How much do you think they can salvage?” the man asks.

“Next to nothing, most likely,” Dinesh responds, which elicits a hum of agreement from the other man.

“You’re pretty cute, you know?” the man says, and Dinesh chokes.

“You didn’t seem like the kind of guy—”

“Who’s gay? Yeah, I get that a lot,” the man says, and Dinesh falls in love.

“You wanna get out of here?” the man asks.

“My house is literally behind us,” Dinesh says, and the man laughs a little. The man wraps a hand around Dinesh’s neck, closing the short distance between the two’s lips.

* * *

 

“What are you doing right now?” Dinesh asks the man. They’re standing in Dinesh’s kitchen, the next morning. The man is shirtless, and reclining on Dinesh’s kitchen table in a way that hurts Dinesh’s heart. 

In the good way.

“Working on fixing this shitty code this guy who does my tattoos gave me. He said he’d give me free tats for life if I made it work, but it’s so unreadably awful that I genuinely doubt I’ll be able to fix it,” the man answers, “what about you?”

“I don’t know. Just trying to get by. I’ve got some bullshit programs I’m testing right now, but I’m not sure if there’s a need for them,” Dinesh says.

“I’m sure you’ll find something that works,” the man says, setting his coffee cup down, and standing abruptly. 

“Well, I should vacate, I’m moving out of the duplex tonight,” he says, and Dinesh realizes.

“You fucker, you live next door?” Dinesh shouts, and the man nods once, before grabbing his shirt from the back of a chair.

“You asshole, it wasn’t even that good!” Dinesh shouts to the man’s back as he puts on his shirt and prepares to walk out.

“You’re lying,” the man says, before leaving.

“Motherfucker,” Dinesh growls, slumping down on the floor.

The man isn’t wrong.

* * *

 

A couple weeks later, Dinesh says goodbye to his shitty, shitty house, to move into a genuinely shitty house. As the uber driver drops him off with all his earthly possessions, he examines the dusty, paneled wood house, and laughs a little at its glorious ugliness.

He knocks at the door, which is opened by the mildly racist ginger, who he’s come to find out is named Erlich.

“Ah, Dinesh Chugtai. Wonderful to see you again! Well, this is my humble abode, welcome,” he says, motioning for Dinesh to step in. The man follows suit, and looks around the front room, which has been set up as a computer station. At one station sits an exhausted looking skinny white dude, staring at a wall of code. The next station over houses a nerdy looking dark haired man, drinking an inordinate amount of soda in a large neon cup.

“That’s Richard,” Erlich says, pointing at the tired, skinny man, “and that’s Big Head, the idiot with the soft drink. I don’t know where Gilfoyle is, but you’ll see the asshole eventually.”

There’s a set of footsteps at the door, and Dinesh looks up, and sees _him_.

His idiot one night stand.

“Ah, Gilfoyle! So happy you could join us,” Erlich says, but Dinesh feels the sarcasm dripping from his voice.

“Piss off, Bachmann,” Gilfoyle snaps, and he moves to his station, not even acknowledging Dinesh.

“You son of a bitch,” Dinesh says, before turning and marching off.

Richard and Erlich both give Gilfoyle inquisitive looks, while Big Head looks up, unaware that there was any interaction between anyone just now.

“We’ve met,” Gilfoyle says in answer to their looks.

“It might be a bad time to tell him you two are sharing a room, then,” Erlich says, and Gilfoyle only raises an eyebrow before going back to coding.


End file.
